


The Tower is Tall but the Fall is Short

by viggorlijah



Series: Twenty-three things that did not happen to John Connor [6]
Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-15
Updated: 2011-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-17 00:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viggorlijah/pseuds/viggorlijah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The metal is strong, the flesh is weak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tower is Tall but the Fall is Short

Dr Sherman never asks about his mother. He doesn't ask anything except if John still wants to kill himself.

John nods and then stares at his shoes until the end of the session.

He asks the doctor once what the point is, sitting in a room and not talking. "You're calmer at the end," Dr Sherman says. "That's something."

Cameron drives him to the appointments. His mother won't, and Derek says it was an accident.

Cameron reads the pamphlets in the waiting room. Sometimes she talks to the little girl who comes in the afternoon. Once, John had to wait until Cameron had finished reading The Paperbag Princess to her.

There is medication that Cameron gives him in the evenings. He sleeps. After lunch, he goes to Dr Sherman's office and tries to think why he shouldn't kill himself.

Some days he manages a few minutes when his hands aren't shaking.

He takes one death and he makes it two. He imagines the little girl dead. He imagines the receptionist dead. The doctor. The man waiting at the elevator. The people on the sidewalk. The cars in the street, idling because their windows are smeared with blood, bodies slumped against the seats.

He holds a gun and walks through them, shooting. They turn on him, the dozens he can imagine dead and he fights, fights until his nails are bleeding and he's pulled so far their necks break, their bodies tear and there's that breath that comes out, that last small breath.

He kills. But he can't imagine more than the streets filled. He can't count to six billion.

He cuts himself shaving. Cameron takes the safety razor and finishes for him, her hands gentle and precise. "Don't tell my mother," he says, and Cameron drops the wad of bloody tissue in the toilet, flushes.

"Go to sleep," she says. "Dr Sherman says sleep is essential for the healing process."

He wakes in the middle of the night and Cameron is on top of him, her hands around his throat, her feet pinning his thighs down. He bucks desperately, but can't get out.

"Fight," Cameron whispers in his ear. "Fight or die."

He bites down on her mouth, bites and pulls until the metal of her jaw gleams on the bloody rip. Her mouth curves, bloody and silver, and her hands slip. He fights and she lets him until they are on the floor and Cameron's head twists between his thighs, blood smeared on his torn pants and her neck tilts like Sarkissian's.

"Good, John," she says. Skin hangs off her jaw, and he can see her tongue move within her skull.

He breathes out and goes slack and she twists her body to follow her neck, snapping back into place. She climbs up over his body again, and this time it's his hand smoothing her torn skin back, and her hand over his, holding it against her jaw when they kiss.

"Fight or die," she says and reaches down between them, shifts and sinks onto him, and John comes with adrenaline racing and blood under his fingernails.

In the morning, he thinks of death, and Cameron comes into the shower and pushes him against the wall and fucks him there. He punches her when he comes, splitting his knuckles.

Derek bandages them, and John asks about the search for the Turk. Sarah makes pancakes. In the afternoon, Cameron drives him to the doctor's. She makes him walk up the stairwell, and on the turn between the fifth and sixth, she pulls him down on top of her and they fuck on the concrete steps until his knees are raw through his jeans and he can't breathe for the smell of sex, the shudders in his body when she twists her fingers, when she takes him down and the muscles in his thighs shake in pain and pleasure.

"And today?" Dr Sherman asks.

John looks at his shoes. He looks out the window. He closes his eyes and remembers his mother screaming, the Sarkissian's neck between his thighs. He breathes and he smells Cameron and sex and below, on the street cars beep and people cross against the lights and the sun still shines.

"Today was better," he says.


End file.
